The Decoration of Houses

Before Edith Wharton became the celebrated novelist of The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, she wrote a book that would revolutionize how Americans thought about their homes. The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored with architect Ogden Codman, is both a radical polemic and a practical manifesto. Wharton despised the Victorian era's signature interior style: heavy window curtains swallowing windows, tabletops buried under ornamental objects, furniture so overstuffed it was barely sitable. She saw these spaces as fundamentally dishonest, decoration that disguised rather than celebrated a room's architecture. Her solution was uncompromising: restore rooms to their essential proportions, let walls and ceilings speak, choose furniture for its line and craftsmanship rather than its upholstery. The book argues that well-designed rooms should be comfortable through simplicity, not despite it. Its influence was immediate and profound - Elsie de Wolfe read it, left acting, and became America's first professional interior decorator. More than a period piece, this is Wharton applying her renowned precision and moral clarity to the spaces people actually inhabit. For readers of her novels, it is a revelation; for anyone interested in design, it is essential.